Tyranny of television

The Hindu

3 hours ago

It's 2025, and yet prime-time Indian television continues to glorify cruelty against women under the garb of 'traditional values'. There is a deeply disturbing serial currently airing on a Hindi general entertainment channel, centred on the character of a kind, talented, and good-hearted young woman who is relentlessly humiliated because of her weight.
From the very beginning, she is taunted by her mother and grandmother for not being slim — despite their knowledge that a pregnancy-related medicine made weight loss impossible for her. Then follows not just casual body shaming, but sustained psychological torment, emotional degradation, and outright abuse by her in-laws — presented as a woman's duty to 'adjust' and 'win hearts'.
A wealthy businessman arranges her marriage to his son, praising her sanskaars. But the groom, diabetic and secretly in love with the bride's model cousin, refuses to accept her. He avoids her, sleeps on the sofa, while his mother and aunt connive to frame her as clumsy and incompetent. They engineer her every mistake, then punish her for it — all the while she tries to prove her worth like the archetypal docile bahu, with a bowed head and a constant stream of apologies.
In a recent and deeply disturbing episode, she is forced to pose as a servant when a domineering relative visits. She is insulted, spanked with a rod, and nearly trapped into spending the night with a hired actor posing as her husband — all in a calculated scheme to drive her out. Yet, she endures this cruelty in silence, convinced that suffering is the road to love.
A new episode reached a new low. It humiliated not one, but two women, turning their pain into a farce for viewer amusement. A village girl chosen by the visiting grandaunt to marry the hero (unaware he's married) is pitted against the wife. The episode ends without justice or consequence — only the image of a woman broken by public mockery. One feels sick watching it.
Evil message
What are we teaching viewers — especially young women — through such shows? That if you are overweight or from a rural background, you must grovel for love and acceptance? That abuse by in-laws must be endured in the name of parampara? That silence, shame, and submission are signs of virtue? And what message are we sending to in-laws — that cruelty is permissible as long as it's cloaked in tradition?
This is not entertainment. This is emotional abuse disguised as morality. The show doesn't challenge oppression, but romanticises it. It rewards toxic behaviour, even painting abusers as concerned, well-meaning elders.
Worse, it normalises violence. Every humiliation the young woman suffers is presented as a test of character. But acceptance by whom? A mother-in-law who hires a man to seduce her daughter-in-law? A grandaunt who hits her with a rod for minor mistakes? These aren't 'family trials' — they are criminal acts.
In the real world, any woman subjected to this level of abuse would suffer long-lasting psychological damage. But on TV, these acts are framed as character-building, as if pain is the price of acceptance.
If the show truly intended to critique social cruelty, it could have shown the young woman resisting, reclaiming her dignity, or getting in-laws who value her. The message could have been one of strength, not submission.
This show is a regressive, damaging portrayal of Indian womanhood. We cannot let mainstream media glorify abuse in the name of sanskaars.
As viewers and citizens, all should strongly protest the normalisation of familial abuse, and call for a boycott of such content.
Channels must rethink their programming. They cannot promote humiliation, cruelty, and misogyny as tradition.
The show must be stopped before it harms.
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